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Food for Thought

A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Code without tests is bad code. It doesn't matter how well written it is, it doesn't matter how pretty or object-orientated or well-encapsulated it is. With tests, we can change the behavior of our code quickly and verifiably.

One difference between a smart programmer and a professional programmer is that the professional programmer understands that clarity is king. Professionals use their powers for good and write code that others can understand.

Neither architecture nor clean code insist on perfection, only on honesty and doing things the best we can. In Scrum, we make everything visible. We are honest about the state of our code because code is never perfect.

XP is designed to use face to face human communication in place of written documentation wherever possible. Effective conversation is faster and more effective than written documentation. When you bring people together, they need less paperwork.

Documentation represents potential profit, rather than a cost, because it's not a finely crafted mess of marketing jargon — documentation is legitimately useful from a developer's perspective. As such, it can help you build and sustain communities!